[MPlayer-users] Which card should I buy for TV-out?

[Brian Hall]

The g400 is way better than the ATI solution, trust me.

I picked up a ATI AIW Rage128 to use for tv-out. It worked in vesa 
framebuffer mode only. There is limited X support, but only in modes 
corresponding to the vesa modes, so you can't tune the display in any 
way. After realizing the limitations of ATI tv-out on Linux, and 
understanding that wasn't likely to change , I decided to switch to a 
g400.

I already had a g400 32MB dual head, so I bought a g400 MAX on eBay 
(for $61!), and switched the old g400 to the video PC. After some work, 
I got tv-out working perfectly on it in matrox framebuffer mode. Much 
better support under Linux, and faster to boot.

Go for the g400, and don't look back...

P.S. I think Nvidia has tv-out support from Linux, but you have to use 
their binary-only drivers.

On Saturday 16 February 2002 04:46 pm, you wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read
> DOCS/bugreports.html] Hi,
>
> > So what card would you buy?
> > It must be cheap (under $100), must have TV-out support under
> > linux, and it should be faster tha g400 (but this is not the most
> > important).
>
> why do you want to replace it?
> i'm sure it's impossible to buy a better card for <$100 than your
> g400. (i think it's dualhead so you have tv-out now)
>
> > My first choice was the ATI Radeon VE, but the MPlayer DOCS says
> > that therewon't be TV-out support for it, and than that Radeons
> > have TV-out support.
> > so what's the truth?
>
> there IS tv-out support, but it's a big hack (calls realmode int 10h
> VESA calls to enable it) so it works only for VESA modes (and -vo
> vesa). dunno about X, i've heard something about GATOS using this
> hack, without it it's impossible. (while for G400 there is tvout
> support in X)

-- 

http://www.bigfoot.com/~brihall
Linux Consultant

If a program is useless, it must be documented.